Germany charges suspect over 2005 killing of Sri Lanka FM

BERLIN – German prosecutors have charged a suspected member of the Tamil Tigers as an accessory to murder in the 2005 assassination of Sri Lanka’s foreign minister.

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that they filed the indictment against the 40-year-old, who was arrested in January and identified only as Navanithan G. in line with German privacy rules, in a Stuttgart court earlier this month. He is also charged with membership of a foreign terrorist organization.

Prosecutors say that the suspect belonged to the Tamil Tigers’ intelligence unit from 2002 to 2009 and provided information that was used to carry out the killing of Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kathirkamar. They say that, in the final phase of the country’s civil war, he also helped leading figures in the Tamil Tigers flee Sri Lanka.